Booker T. Washington
by Edgar S.
Booker T. Washington was born in 1856 in Virginia. Due to the economic hardships his family faced during the reconstruction era, Washington worked in salt mines until the age 16 where he left to be educated at Hampton Institute, Norfolk Virginia. To pay for his schooling, Booker T. Washington worked as a janitor and quickly realized that education could provide a means to better one self and his race as a whole. (Gale).
Post the civil war era, race relations flared between African Americans and Whites. Not only did the New South directly humiliate African Americans through Jim Crow laws, but some Southern states took matters into their own hands to ensure that the African American population was kept in placed (Greenwood, 105-107). According to Greenwood, between the years of 1889 and 1899, nearly 1,200 reported lynching of African Americans occurred in the South. The South also implemented legislation, without the use of racial language, which prevented African Americans from voting. Such laws like the “grandfather clause,” poll tax, and literacy tests left African Americans with little means of advancing themselves. But Booker T. Washington had a plan.
As a strong advocate for education, Washington began to teach after his education. In 1881, Washington was named the head of the Tuskegee Institute and was able to build it into a center of learning, industrial, and agricultural training (The Progress of a People). Perpetuating the idea of ‘pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps’ in the institute, Washington was able to gain popularity in the African American and White Northern population including Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller who donated handsomely to Washington’s Tuskegee Institute (Greenwood 110).
Washington believed that African Americans could regain their rights in the South only by accepting the political status quo and working gradually to change it by proving that they were productive members of society by economic advancement. Washington’s speech known as the “Atlanta Compromise” at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895, emphasizes these points as he captured the eyes of the nation:
Booker T. Washington was able to appeal to white people within his speech by ensuring them that his people will continue to be hardworking and obedient:
Much of the appeal, as W.E.B. Du Bois in his paper, “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” states, is due to the fact that Mr. Washington asks African American people to accept the status quo and give up their political power, their insistence on civil rights, and the higher education of the population. By giving up civil rights, how can a race progress to be seen as equals? Instead of educating institutes, Booker T. Washington emphasized the preparation of blacks to be industrially capable to work in factories such as the Tuskegee, hence donations from Carnegie and Rockefeller as they seeked cheap workers. But even more importantly, Washington’s conservative means of obtaining civil rights shifted the burden from whites to African Americans:
Although Booker T. Washington’s conservative means of obtaining civil rights was criticized during the later part of the Gilded Age Era, his political innovations and investment into the Tuskegee Institute during the Gilded Age provided at least some means self-improvement of the African American. According to Andrews, many blacks in the South saw Booker T. Washington as their champion and adopted his autobiography as their guidebook for a better life (vii). Within his bibliography, Washington proclaimed that the South will gradually accept blacks if they proved that they were valuable, productive members of society who deserved rare and equal treatment for the law and deserved citizenship rights (Andrews, viii).
Link to All of Booker T. Washington’s Papers (may require offline library connection)
Works Cited
Andrews, William L. Introduction. Up from Slavery. By Booker T. Washington. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. vii-x.
“Booker Taliafero Washington.” Black History. Thompson Gale. Accessed April 18, 2006.
Du Bois, W.E.B. “Of Mr. Washington and Others.” Online Document. Access April 20, 2006. <>
Greenwood, Janette Thomas. The Gilded Age: A History in Documents. ‘New York: Oxford UP, 2003.
“Progress of a People: Booker T. Washington.” Online. Accessed on April 22, 2006.
Booker T. Washington was born in 1856 in Virginia. Due to the economic hardships his family faced during the reconstruction era, Washington worked in salt mines until the age 16 where he left to be educated at Hampton Institute, Norfolk Virginia. To pay for his schooling, Booker T. Washington worked as a janitor and quickly realized that education could provide a means to better one self and his race as a whole. (Gale).
Post the civil war era, race relations flared between African Americans and Whites. Not only did the New South directly humiliate African Americans through Jim Crow laws, but some Southern states took matters into their own hands to ensure that the African American population was kept in placed (Greenwood, 105-107). According to Greenwood, between the years of 1889 and 1899, nearly 1,200 reported lynching of African Americans occurred in the South. The South also implemented legislation, without the use of racial language, which prevented African Americans from voting. Such laws like the “grandfather clause,” poll tax, and literacy tests left African Americans with little means of advancing themselves. But Booker T. Washington had a plan.
As a strong advocate for education, Washington began to teach after his education. In 1881, Washington was named the head of the Tuskegee Institute and was able to build it into a center of learning, industrial, and agricultural training (The Progress of a People). Perpetuating the idea of ‘pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps’ in the institute, Washington was able to gain popularity in the African American and White Northern population including Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller who donated handsomely to Washington’s Tuskegee Institute (Greenwood 110).
Washington believed that African Americans could regain their rights in the South only by accepting the political status quo and working gradually to change it by proving that they were productive members of society by economic advancement. Washington’s speech known as the “Atlanta Compromise” at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895, emphasizes these points as he captured the eyes of the nation:
Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put brains and skills into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaw of life and the useful. No race can proper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.
Booker T. Washington was able to appeal to white people within his speech by ensuring them that his people will continue to be hardworking and obedient:
Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in you fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen…(Washington)
Much of the appeal, as W.E.B. Du Bois in his paper, “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” states, is due to the fact that Mr. Washington asks African American people to accept the status quo and give up their political power, their insistence on civil rights, and the higher education of the population. By giving up civil rights, how can a race progress to be seen as equals? Instead of educating institutes, Booker T. Washington emphasized the preparation of blacks to be industrially capable to work in factories such as the Tuskegee, hence donations from Carnegie and Rockefeller as they seeked cheap workers. But even more importantly, Washington’s conservative means of obtaining civil rights shifted the burden from whites to African Americans:
It is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is first, that the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation…His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great success (Du Bois).
Although Booker T. Washington’s conservative means of obtaining civil rights was criticized during the later part of the Gilded Age Era, his political innovations and investment into the Tuskegee Institute during the Gilded Age provided at least some means self-improvement of the African American. According to Andrews, many blacks in the South saw Booker T. Washington as their champion and adopted his autobiography as their guidebook for a better life (vii). Within his bibliography, Washington proclaimed that the South will gradually accept blacks if they proved that they were valuable, productive members of society who deserved rare and equal treatment for the law and deserved citizenship rights (Andrews, viii).
Link to All of Booker T. Washington’s Papers (may require offline library connection)
Works Cited
Andrews, William L. Introduction. Up from Slavery. By Booker T. Washington. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. vii-x.
“Booker Taliafero Washington.” Black History. Thompson Gale. Accessed April 18, 2006.
Du Bois, W.E.B. “Of Mr. Washington and Others.” Online Document. Access April 20, 2006. <>
Greenwood, Janette Thomas. The Gilded Age: A History in Documents. ‘New York: Oxford UP, 2003.
“Progress of a People: Booker T. Washington.” Online. Accessed on April 22, 2006.
posted by Leslie Madsen-Brooks at 9:32 PM
5 Comments:
I find it interesting to see the many tactics used to prevent African Americans from obtaining any rights, such as voting (due to such laws that you mention). Washington's determination to educate "his" people seemed to encourage the growth of the African American community. It is not surprising to see that Washington was supported by big business moguels such as Carnegie and Rockefeller...as they sought after cheap labor.
Good post. At first I was a bit taken aback by Washington expressing that African Americans should accept the status quo, but from the reading on Booker T. Washington I thought the Tuskeegee Institute sounded like a very productive center. Especially given that, as far as I know anyways, there was no educational or vocational system to help African Americans get beyond living what we would call today "paycheck to paycheck". I haven't read this, but it seems like it would have given African Americans the means to build communities and careers, and open up higher education as something more accessible to more people, because they would be able to move beyond having to worry about basic things like food, clothing, and shelter, as Washington stated.
Washington seemed more of a political realist than a person who, at heart, was willing to compromise on his dreams. The process of institutionalized racial equality is still not completed, it was unfair for people to criticize Washington for his realistic approach to the racial divide.
I think the reason why so many people see Washington as a realist is because his ideology asks that we consider the development of political and econmic equality for blacks as starting from scratch, that you can somehow push a reset button and rebuild your community from the ground up. But I think the problem with that is there is no 'fresh start'. True, blacks after the Civil War with their fairly newly won freedom could have rebuilt from there but there was so much animosity from white southerns that they couldn't measure up in their eyes no matter how diligently they worked at it. Having legally established that all men were entitled to equal rights, it seems like a more powerful approach to follow a "Du Bois"ian to demand upfront their rights and to delve into 'high culture' with full intention of claim all the rights that legally were in existence and should have been theirs.
This is a strong post on Booker T. Washington. Washington favored an education that catored to the needs of his people. He didn't belive studying christopher columbus, shakespeare, or learning french dialect would help his people free themselves from financial debt, oppression, and second class citizenship. With the founding of the Tuskegee Institute, he alongside other black instuctors taught agriculture, which was at the core of the economy for blacks in the the south. You can think of it as an ITT tech in terms that its not about a universal education, like at a university, its about the essentials you need to survive and prosper. Thats what Washington stood for.
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